Originally, moulded wood sections had to be manufactured in random discrete lengths of the desired timber. This expensive original method was replaced by techniques involving the application of discrete lengths of veneer to a cheaper wood stock of softwood, chipboard, fibreboard, hollow plastics section or the like. Real wood veneer laminates hitherto have been too thick for use on mouldings and like complicated shapes, for which veneers per se, i.e. non-laminated veneers, have been required.
However, currently available non-laminated veneers are not suitable for complicated mouldings, because from the handling point of view it has been necessary to use relatively thick, say 0.6 mm, veneers, which tend to split if comformed to sharply curved surfaces. In other words, the necessity to provide veneers of a sufficient thickness for ready handling automatically results in veneers of limited flexibility, so that they can only be used on simple sections.
Additionally, there is the problem of matching the normally distributed, naturally occurring lengths of veneer to the user requirement for fixed length mouldings, which results in a considerable yield loss in the use of expensive veneers.